Teen critically hurt in Pisgat Ze’ev attack in stable condition
Doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus say youth’s life saved by field medics’ speedy evacuation
A 13-year-old boy who was stabbed and critically injured while riding his bike in East Jerusalem Monday was in stable condition, hospital officials said Tuesday, after performing an emergency surgery that may have saved his life.
A second victim of the terror attack, a 25-year-old man seriously injured in the knife attack in Pisgat Ze’ev, was also listed in stable condition after spending the night at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus.
Both victims are sedated and attached to a breathing apparatus.
The 13-year-old boy suffered multiple stab wounds to his upper body, and underwent resuscitation and emergency surgery, doctors said.
In the evening, doctors said the surgery may have saved his life, but he was still in very serious condition, having lost a great deal of blood. They praised the Magen David Adom rescue service for the speed with which the boy had been evacuated to the hospital, with one of the surgeons telling Channel 2 that he would likely not have survived otherwise.
He also happened to arrive at the hospital as doctors were changing shifts, and therefore all the key surgical personnel were available to treat him.
The boy was stabbed multiple times as he rode his bike through the Pisgat Zeev neighborhood on Monday afternoon.
“It was horrifying,” Asi Gabay, a family friend of the younger victim recounted to Channel 2. “The boy ran to me and shouted, ‘Asi, help me! Asi, help me!’
“I had a mop with me and we put it on him as a tourniquet,” Gabay said. “Within a few seconds the kid lost consciousness, was completely white and was lying on the ground.”
The boy’s attacker, also 13 and a resident of the nearby Arab neighborhood of Beit Hanina, fled after stabbing the Israeli boy. While escaping, he was hit by a car and seriously injured.
An Israel Police officer and Border Police officer eventually caught up with the second attacker, 15, who had stabbed the 25-year-old Israeli. The attacker ran toward the officers with a blade in his hand, a police spokeswoman said Monday. The officers fatally shot him after he ignored their calls to halt.
An eyewitness described the assailants to Channel 2 as being young teenagers armed with “machetes.”
A video posted on social media appeared to show the younger of the two teens writhing in a pool of blood on the tracks of the Jerusalem Light Rail, surrounded by police. The video was filmed by an Israeli passerby who shouted “Die! Die, you son of a whore” repeatedly at the teen before he was administered first aid by Magen David Adom paramedics. Police ordered the man to leave the scene.
A number of attackers in a spate of stabbings over the last two weeks have been in their late teens and early 20s, and before the Pisgat Ze’ev attack two others were confirmed as minors. Jabel Mukaber resident Mustafa Khatieb, 17, tried to knife a Border Police officer near Jerusalem’s Lions’ Gate before he was shot and killed Monday morning, and 16-year-old Ishak Badran, also from East Jerusalem, stabbed two people near Damascus Gate on Saturday.
Police have bolstered their presence around Jerusalem’s Old City and other areas around the capital in an effort to clamp down on a spate of terror attacks, which have become a daily occurrence over the last weeks.
